Datelines

LIMA - Heavy rains prevented medical teams from reaching the survivors of an Occidental Petroleum charter plane that crashed into a swamp in Peru's Amazon jungle with 87 people on board. Rescuers digging through mud and dense foliage have found 13 survivors and 50 bodies from the flight.

Russia

MOSCOW - President Boris Yeltsin will fill the last remaining seats in his new streamlined Cabinet on Friday, new Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko said.

MOSCOW - Air force jets bombed the last ice floe on the Northern Dvina River, where the local governor reported some of the worst flooding this century.

England

LONDON - Londoners went to the polls Thursday to decide whether the British capital will have its first elected mayor in a referendum that is part of the year-old Labor Party government's first popularity test.

China

BEIJING - The government accused Britain of violating a Sino-British accord on Hong Kong by interfering in the former British colony's first legislative elections under Chinese rule.

Kenya

NAIROBI - Sudan's foreign minister said the government was fully committed to a referendum on self-determination in south Sudan and would be happy to see the south become a sovereign state.

South Korea

SEOUL - A South Korean Red Cross official said North Korea has agreed to allow expanded monitoring of food aid distribution in certain areas of the country.

Norway

OSLO - A lazy Norwegian postman got the sack after he dumped thousands of letters in his cellar rather than delivering them. The man, in his 30s, admitted failing to deliver in eastern Oslo after locals grumbled about a lack of letters.

Ukraine

KIEV - The only functioning reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant will be restarted May 18, Ukraine's state Energoatom company said.

KIEV - Coal miners widened their strike to 57 pits on the fourth day of a protest demanding unpaid wages and an end to cheap coal imports from neighboring Russia.

Philippines

MANILA - With only four days to go before the presidential election in the Philippines, an new opinion poll gave Joseph Estrada an unassailable lead, and the former movie star predicted he would win by a landslide.

Denmark

COPENHAGEN - A Danish expedition will go to Greenland in July to search for fragments of a meteorite that crashed to the ground last December, hoping to find clues to the birth of the solar system.

Iran

TEHRAN - Millions of Iranian Shiite Muslims marched in long processions, rhythmically thumping their chests to mark Ashoura, the peak of a Shiite mourning festival.

Iraq

BAGHDAD - The government said it turned down an offer of help in 1990 to build an atomic bomb with Pakistani expertise and reported the matter to the world's nuclear watchdog organization.

South Africa

JOHANNESBURG - White children training for sports at a South African school dressed up as Nazis and acted out the delousing of Jews before urging that they be killed, Jewish officials said.